Naomi Pepper
Assistant Park Manager, Scioto Audubon Metro Park
Naomi Pepper is talking with Communications Coordinator, Virginia Gordon
About me
I grew up in Worthington and went to Linworth Alternative High School. It’s a great school and prepares students for college by offering classes lasting one hour and 20 minutes, much longer than classes at other high schools. The Linworth Experiential Program enables teachers to choose what classes they want to teach, and students to choose which classes they want to take. I’ve always been a big reader. Back in high school I read a lot books. I also took a Greek mythology class, and recently I read The Odyssey for the first time, to reexplore the topic. I’m excited that a film of The Odyssey is coming out in July, directed by Christopher Nolan, director of the trio of Batman films and other modern blockbusters.
As students, we did internships every year of high school. I did internships at a veterinarian’s office and the Columbus Library. In our last half year of classes, we did two separate two-month long internships. I did a very interesting internship at a dietitian’s office and had a strong inclination to seek a future career as a medical dietitian. It was only when I met and talked to an advisor during orientation for OSU that I learned how much math was involved in dietitian classes. That put me off, as math is a long way from being one of my favorite things to do.
My second two-month internship was at a zoo in Tel Aviv. I lived there with family for the two months of the internship, with my aunt and uncle and four cousins. My dad was born in New York but he moved to Israel as a child. His brother, my uncle, still lives there. My mom is from England.
COMMUNITY SERVICE PROJECTS AT OSU
At OSU I did a bachelors in community leadership and a major in community service projects. This was part of the Agricultural Science and Communications department. The ethos of the study was to prepare us for leadership positions in the non-profit sector, and to grow our abilities to manage and direct change at both an organizational and a community level. A major community service project I worked on looked at issues around food insecurity as it affected freshman students and also members of our community. I also did an internship working with a student group on women’s health issues. I’m very proud of the work I did on that internship and I learned such a lot by doing it.
FIRST JOBS
Between my junior and senior years at OSU I took a seasonal job with the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department and worked as a camp director in outdoor education. I graduated from OSU in December 2019. The following summer I returned to the same seasonal position as a camp director. This was the Covid year, but Columbus still held summer camps, but with major restrictions, including mandatory masks and greatly reduced numbers of campers per camp. During my first year, we had had 150 kids a week over the eight weeks of camps. With counsellors and junior counsellors I was responsible for about 250 people over the course of the summer. But in the second year, we were restricted to only 15 to 20 kids a week.
After camp that second year, I was taken on by the city as a part-time outdoor educator, specializing in canoeing programs. I had floated a kayak before, but had never previously been in a canoe. So it was a case of learning on the job for me at the beginning. I learned immediately that canoeing is a lot harder than kayaking. But I quickly got the hang of it. I chose to always be the person in the back of the canoe, doing the steering. The person in front controls the speed of the canoe. Our base was across from Griggs Reservoir, on the Scioto River. We would do the canoeing programs mostly in spring and fall. In summer, I would offer canoeing to the camp kids. With water levels typically lower in summer, we would do more fishing programs rather than canoe programs.
I also worked part-time at REI, selling outdoor clothing at their stores. I had started that while I was at OSU. I worked a lot, back then, to earn money for my college classes.
YOGA
I started yoga while I was in high school and got my yoga teaching certification after 300 hours of training. At college, I did some yoga teaching, working for instructors at various studios around Columbus. I also did a kids after school yoga program. During Covid, I did live streamed yoga programs via Zoom. I worked as a yoga teacher part-time while still part-time at the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department. I still do yoga programs today, offering two programs a month at Scioto Grove Metro Park, based at The Grove lodge. While working at the yoga studios, I developed a dislike of how expensive yoga classes could be for students. My programs at Scioto Grove are free, and that’s how I like it.
WORKING AT METRO PARKS
In fall 2020 I saw that Metro Parks was hiring part-time rangers. I was wanting to try something different. I wanted to continue working mostly outdoors and in public service. I liked working for local government. I did an interview for one of the part-time ranger positions and was offered a position here at Scioto Audubon Metro Park. I started in December 2020. At the time, all the park staff, at every park, was split in two, and were designated as Pod A and Pod B. I worked in Pod A, and it wasn’t until late in the following summer that I even got to meet colleagues who worked in Pod B.
I got to meet a lot of people out on the trails. Even though there were still masking mandates in place, the parks were one of the few entities that remained fully open to the public during those awful Covid times. We were even busier than in a normal year. I loved my time as a part-time ranger here, and was delighted to be promoted to full-time about eight months later. I enjoyed helping people, whether that was something as simple as giving directions in the park, or helping visitors change a flat tire on their vehicle.
Something that happens more often than you’d think, is that people lock their car keys in their vehicle. I think it’s almost a dozen times now that I’ve been able to help visitors in this predicament, by getting their vehicles opened safely. People are so grateful and relieved when I’m able to help them in this way, as it saves them the expense of bringing a locksmith out to the park. I’m certainly not the only ranger who has helped so many people to overcome this issue. Oddly enough, it seems to happen most often when the weather is terrible.
I also enjoy building relationships with our regular visitors, and also interacting with birders at the park. I like to ask them what birds they have seen today, and can point out what birds have been seen lately at the park. Sometimes we have to enforce rules. Feeding animals isn’t the most frequent rule violation, but it’s one that gives me my favorite opportunity to educate the public on wildlife. Here at Scioto Audubon that often includes turtles and geese. I always like to make it a teaching moment when enforcing a rule. Quite often, the response is, “sorry, I didn’t know you couldn’t do that.” Which is what an offender would most likely say, regardless of whether it was true or not. But it’s an opportunity to give related information too, about why a rule is in place. Now and then we get an occasional dog bite at the dog park, or a report from a visitor about a suspicious person they may have seen on the trails, but most incidents are minor in nature. The vast majority of our visitors enjoy spending time at our park since it’s downtown and easily accessible via the Greenways trails system.
PROMOTION TO ASSISTANT MANAGER
I graduated from police academy training, which is required of all full-time rangers. Then in fall 2023 there was an opening for an assistant manager position here at Scioto Audubon. I got the job, and the promotion. I took over doing the ranger scheduling, so I now found myself in charge of the people doing the very things I used to do. We have two full-time rangers and seven part-time rangers here at the park. I still do some rangering of my own a decent amount of time. Now I have more of a say in the daily operations of the staff. I hope my staff learn from me, but I have to say, I love the fact the fact that I can still learn an awful lot more from them.
WRANGLING ANIMALS
Having mentioned my two internships at a veterinarian’s office and at the Israeli zoo, it should be no surprise that I love animals. One aspect of my work that I undertook as a ranger and which I have continued to lead as assistant manager, is wrangling injured animals in the park. At least once a month, and usually more often, we find animals that are injured or sick. We have a lot of geese at the park and they quite often get caught up in fishing lines. Their efforts to extricate themselves usually make things worse and they run the danger of having their circulation cut off. I wrangled an injured goose just recently, using a large net to capture it safely. We then had it transported to Ohio Wildlife Center for treatment. I have also wrangled many smaller birds, various species of ducks, plus bats and turtles. One time, I rescued a raccoon that had got caught in a dumpster and was exhausting itself while trying to get out. Another time, someone dumped about 17 farm ducks at the park. Farm ducks are not accustomed to live in the wild, or to the cold of winter. With help from other staff, I rounded up these domestic ducks and a farm sanctuary came out here to take them.
As well as injured wild animals, we get a lot of cats and dogs, and even domestic rabbits, dumped here at the park. I’ve caught many of these neglected family animals and had them taken to animal shelters. I have a particular affinity for abandoned cats. I think park cats are really special. I live with two other people and we have four cats in the household. Three of them are cats that were abandoned here at the park, and two of these, Miles and Davey, are cats that I caught here myself.
THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN
I also lead the work on the butterfly garden. I’ve added more plant species and have got our wonderful team of volunteers involved in weeding and pruning the garden. As well as flox, I’ve added more beebalm and oxeye daisies to attract more pollinators. We also have butterfly bush, brown-eyed Susans, goldenrod and ironweed in the garden. In late spring and early summer the blooms are gorgeous, and the garden attracts great numbers of pollinators, including many beautiful butterfly species.
I work as the park’s volunteer coordinator too. We have about 70 volunteers on our list, but there are five or six who come frequently and are very helpful with litter pickups, cleaning and weeding the butterfly garden. I arranged a special spotted lantern fly smashing evening, in which volunteers were armed with fly swatters to help rid us of those very damaging invasive insect. Unfortunately we’ve had them here too often. But the volunteers made light work of the ones in our garden that night.
BEE KEEPING
I also took over responsibility for our bee hive. We have one hive, filled with honey bees. The hive is located behind the Grange Insurance Nature Center. I don my full bee keeper gear and check the hive about twice a month. I use a smoker, to help shoo the bees away from me as I check the hive. I’m looking to make sure there is enough space in the hive for it to keep expanding, to check that they’re having babies, and that there is an absence of mites. So far we haven’t had any mite infestation of the hive. We use a preventative treatment twice a year. If I see larva in the brood frames, I know that there is a queen active in the hive, even though I might not see her, as there are so many bees covering her location. But I have seen the queen a few times.
It’s fascinating every time I open up the hive and see the worker bees and the drones doing their stuff. The bees leave the hive and return, sometimes travelling many miles, and pollinating plants both inside and outside the park as they take their fly outs.
KNOWING THE PARKS
Long before I started working at Metro Parks, I loved going to Highbanks. I went there a lot as a teenager. I would often go alone and hike the Dripping Rock Trail, which is a really nice trail with lots of pretty scenery. The trail is about 3 miles long, which is an ideal hiking distance for me. I also went to Battelle Darby Creek a lot, especially during the early Covid months. I also trained for 5K races on the Multipurpose Trail at Sharon Woods.
I loved running 5Ks with my mom, who has always been a dedicated runner. She’s had knee issues recently which prevent her from running, but she still enters 5Ks and walks the route, rather than running it. I enjoy walking them with her, or just coming to one of the parks with her, usually Highbanks, to walk a trail together. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
I see my family once a week or once every two weeks at the least. We enjoy gathering for family dinners. As well as my mom and dad, my older sister, Lee, comes to the dinners with her husband and their two kids. I go alone, or sometimes with my boyfriend, Dan.
MY FAVORITE PARK ACTIVITY
I love birding. When I worked at Columbus Recreation and Parks, my supervisor, a naturalist, talked so excitedly about birds that she got me interested in birdwatching. That, plus I saw my ‘spark’ bird, which is a bird that gets you into birding. My spark bird was a northern flicker, which I saw at a park feeder. It is still one of my favorite birds. I bought a pair of Nikon binoculars and my love for birding just continued to grow. Ducks are my favorites, so I go to parks with large lakes or wetlands. The prairie wetland at Battelle Darby Creek is a favorite haunt. I also frequent Prairie Oaks and Blendon Woods. My favorite waterfowl is a ruddy duck, which is just such a colorful and beautiful species. One time, while on the road, headed for Chicago, I stopped off for a few hours of excellent birding at the Indiana Dunes National Park.
Traveling – places I’ve been, places I’d love to go
ISRAEL
I’ve been to Israel several times, to stay with family, my aunt and uncle and my four cousins. Plus an older cousin, who lives elsewhere. Tel Aviv is close to the sea and I have often enjoyed just sitting on the beautiful beach with my cousin Amir, and the two of us enjoying a beer. It is also a great experience to visit Israeli markets and parks. My aunt and uncle and four cousins are coming here to visit us this coming August, which we’re all greatly looking forward to.
COSTA RICA
Some of the yoga teachers I worked for hosted a yoga retreat for staff – in Costa Rica! I went there during a gap year between high school and college. There were eight of us on the retreat. We were in the rain forest and I remember seeing animals that I’d only ever seen before in nature documentaries. One was a fiddler crab, which we saw on a beach, and which I had only ever seen before on the Planet Earth TV documentaries. The other was an arachnid, sometimes called a whip spider, or a tailless whip scorpion. This animal was scaled up to be much larger and used in the fourth Harry Potter movie, The Goblet of Fire.
MEXICO AND ENGLAND
I went with my mom and my sister for a holiday in Playa del Carmen. We were right on the beach. We did an excursion to the open air caves and partly open cenotes, which are natural pits or sinkholes formed millions of years ago when limestone bedrock collapsed to free groundwater. The waters are stunningly clear and beautiful, and ideal for swimming or snorkeling. The pools are magical, and include many aquatic plants and species of fish.
I also went with my mom to England and she showed me London, the great city where she was born. We took a double-decker bus trip through the city and went to the Natural History Museum, which has one of the world’s greatest collection of dinosaur fossils.
OUR NATIONAL PARKS
I’ve been to quite a number of national parks, I went to Joshua Tree National Park in 2021, and the following year I went back to California and visited Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Pinnacles national parks. Every park had something special about it. On the way to Pinnacles National Park we stopped to switch drivers, and in getting out of the car I came just about face to face with a group of barn owls sitting on a tree. There were five of them, and for a good many seconds they just sat there and stared at me as I stared back at them. It was a magical moment, and then after staring at me long enough, they just flew away.
Other national parks I’ve been to include Acadia in Maine, the Everglades in Florida, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Zion in Utah, and Mount Rainier and Olympic in Washington State. The rain forest in Olympic National Park made a lasting impression on me. It’s such a strange and different environment. Everything is covered in moss and is so green and damp. There are lots of ferns, and the trees are very ancient and large.
My favorite food and dessert
I love food so much! I like to cook, and especially to make my own pasta dishes from scratch. My favorite is a rather simple but a delicious dish, it’s homemade fettucine with butter and parmesan. After I’ve made my noodles from scratch, I take a little of the pasta water and move to another pan, and add the butter and parmesan. It thickens up nicely and make a wonderful sauce for the pasta.
I also enjoy Indian and Korean food, although I don’t think I can do them justice in my own kitchen. I like to go out to the Tensuke Market by Henderson Road. It’s actually a Japanese market, where you can buy wonderful sushi and ramen noodles. There’s a restaurant attached to the market, where I can sometimes find my favorite Korean dish on the menu. It’s called Bibimbap, and it’s warm rice with vegetables and thinly shaved steak, mixed with a chili pepper sauce, and topped with a fried egg.
I eat out at Aab in Grandview, and usually get their eggplant curry. You can choose how spicy you want them to make it. I do make curry at home, but it isn’t as good as the one from Aab.
I do make a really great devilled egg, though. I often take them along with me to our family dinners. I boil the egg, chill them in ice to make them easy to peel, then cut them in half and take out the yoke. I mix the yokes with mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. Then I use a piping bag to put the mixture back into the halved egg whites. For family dinners, that’s how I make them, as my mom doesn’t especially like spicy food. For home use, I add some tabasco sauce to the yoke mixture. Before serving, I top the devilled eggs with a sprinkle of paprika or some crispy onion.
Another dish I make at home is risotto. It’s a real labor of love. The pasta rice is very absorbent so I have to keep topping up the pan with a chicken broth as it cooks. At the end, I sprinkle the pasta rice with parmesan and serve it with vegetable. I especially like serving it with asparagus.
For dessert, my mom makes a great tiramisu, which is absolutely delicious. But there’s one thing I’ve found that’s even better, which is the gooey butter cake ice cream from Jenny’s Ice Cream. It’s a wonderful texture and taste, with butterscotch, caramel and pieces of vanilla sheet cake in the ice cream.
My favorite entertainment
I read a lot. Just now, I’m reading a novel by Amor Towles called A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s a work of historical fiction about a member of the Russian aristocracy who is sentenced by the communists to live in a hotel for the rest of his life. The novel covers a period of about 25 years from the mid 1920s to the mid 1950s.
Most of the books I read are historical or literary fiction. Another excellent book I read recently was The Listeners, by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s set during the Second World War. Captured German, Japanese and Italian officers are held in West Virginia, and the listeners are the American secret services, spying on them and listening in to their conversations, hoping to discover secrets.
A favorite book on my recent list was The Names, by Florence Knapp. This is a novel about alternate timelines, and examines what will happen to a family depending on which of three names a woman gives to her new-born son.
Favorite authors of mine include JoJo Moyes, who writes literary fiction with undertones of romance; Taylor Jenkins-Reid, who also writes literary fiction, sometimes with a romance theme, but often involving a celebrity as a lead character, or a woman going through various hardships or journeys.
My favorite movies are the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and V for Vendetta, which is a mix of history and science fiction and has very poetic characters and storyline.
On TV, my favorite shows are Mad Men, Ted Lasso, and Invincible, which is an animated show but it’s very violent, so it won’t be to everyone’s taste.
What Scioto Audubon Manager Daniel White says about Naomi
“Naomi is an excellent assistant manager and was an excellent ranger before that. Naomi balances compassion, fortitude and critical thinking to help advance the park and the district. This is evident from her role as a field training Officer, her assistance in trainings, and her mentorship for staff at Scioto Audubon and across all Metro Parks. Naomi understands Metro Parks goals and instills professionalism and confidence in new staff while providing insight to more experienced team members that helps to create a cohesive team. I look forward to Naomi’s next accomplishments every day. Thanks Naomi!”